Value of cooling OC'ed MSI G4 4400?

[me12345]

A while ago I purchased an MSI G4 4400 with video in and its amazing. The problem, is that its not quite amazing enough :)

As a result, I have decided to try overclocking to see what kind of improvement I can get. I am considering either OC'ing using the standard equipment, or spending about $30 to get myself: Arctic Silver 3, Arctic Silver Adhesive, and a Thermaltake GeForce 4 cooling kit (2 front HS, 2 back HS, plus their G4 GPU cooler). My question is, how much does an OC'ed MSI G4 4400 benefit from increased cooling, in terms of performance and stability? Iv seen alot about how well it can be overclocked using the standard cooling, but I'v also seen some pretty high numbers from people using advanced and extreme cooling solutions. In case its a factor, my case does tend to run pretty hot to begin with, due mostly to having alot of hard drives. Having to yank the G4 for a bit would give me an excuse to replace a dying case fan too though :)


System:
Athlon 900
Asus A7V KT133
576mb PC133 RAM
XP Pro
MSI G4 4400
4 5400 HD's(1 IBM, 1 Maxtor, 1 Fujitsu, 1 Seagate)
2 7200 HD's(both IBM)

[funnyperson1]

i would try it for yourself first and then see if you are satisfied with stock ocing...chances are the burn for oc will overtake you and you will end up getting ubercooling :)

[me12345]

Well an end goal for me is a purely watercooled system, but at the moment I'm planning an almost complete rebuild once dual ddr comes out (assuming it meets expectations), I'm saving for a laptop for college, and I'm trying to keep my bank acounts high enough to pay for emergency car repairs (old car with 114k miles - had to rebuild transmission last year, engine runs great but may need a rebuild of its own sometime soon). All in all, I can't really justify the expense of extreme cooling solutions right now, especially since college and work don't really leave me that much time to play games to begin with.

[FTC]

me12345,

Try with default heatsink before spending a $. Those MSI's all come with the same coolers, that are pretty good... plus RAM heatsinks normally don't gain you much. So if you can reach 310 or so mhz core and about 15-20% memory overclock improvement, don't expect much more with additional cooling.

Regards
FTC